At a historic United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, 9 Western nations, together with Australia, joined the rising listing of nations that now recognise Palestinian statehood.
These proclamations arrived simply days after the UN and the International Association of Genocide Scholars each declared, for the primary time, that Israel has dedicated genocide in opposition to Palestinians within the Gaza Strip. The UN discovered that Israel’s escalating pressured evictions and lethal pounding of Gaza City from sky and land “intentionally inflicted circumstances of life on the Palestinians in Gaza calculated to destroy, in complete or partly, the Palestinians in Gaza, which is an underlying act of genocide”.
Through all this, Dr Khamis Elessi — a ache medication and neurorehabilitation specialist who has continued to take care of sufferers in Gaza’s northern hospitals, a father to seven kids, a husband, and my expensive pal — has lastly, reluctantly, fled his beloved Gaza City.
In early September, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz stated on X that the “gates of hell are opening now” in Gaza. Sure sufficient, Khamis’ metropolis is now a hellish inferno.
Khamis left me a prolonged voice message a couple of days in the past. He spoke slowly, his phrases often cracking. He narrated his story for the world to listen to. With permission, I share that transcript right here.
Dear beloved sister Rachel,
Thank you a lot to your variety phrases, to your empathy, to your unwavering help.
It’s an extended, lengthy trek of ache, struggling, bitterness, heartbreak, pressured eviction, losses of every thing you’ve owned and labored for, for the previous 40 years, you and your brothers and sisters. Losing your clinic, shedding your family members, your folks, your college.
But regardless of all these losses, I’ve tried my finest to stay steadfast right here in Gaza City, for the previous 715 days, not leaving Gaza for even one single day. I had many good provides to go away Gaza, however I refused and I remained, serving hundreds and hundreds of individuals and needy sufferers.
The scenario was actually, actually onerous over the previous 715 days right here in Gaza. But during the last three weeks, our choices have turn out to be numbered. Before, we had different choices — to maneuver from Area A, to Area B, to Area C, then again to Area B or A — as a result of in Gaza City we nonetheless had some standing houses, standing buildings.
But now choices are very restricted and there may be nowhere to go. They have added new instruments for barbaric massacres, utilizing automated tanks that can preserve strolling by themselves after which backed by 3,000 to five,000 kilograms of deadly ammunition amongst buildings, towers. And they blow it from the sky, demolishing tens of houses in a single or two seconds.
And I attempted to carry to my remaining energy however sadly, for the previous three weeks and notably prior to now one week, our space Tal al-Hawa, which is essentially the most fashionable, essentially the most superior space in Gaza City, was focused severely from completely different instructions, utilizing all these deadly weapons on the identical time. F16 bombings on towers and tall buildings, detonation of tanks amongst residential blocks, and taking pictures of quadcopters or helicopters on folks.
Khamis posted on Facebook a collection of devastating pictures of his pressured eviction. The convoy of autos piled excessive with the household’s furnishings — mattresses, couches, chairs, cooking gear, garments. Khamis and I had as soon as giggled at a horse trotting down bustling Salah al-Din Road on a leash by way of the window of a shifting automotive (“See this?!” he had laughed. “This is Gaza!”). In his pictures, a donkey lies overcome on the bottom, unable to carry its head any longer to tug alongside its proprietor’s possessions packed onto a cart, whereas a younger man pleads with it to stand up.
Khamis’ two youngest sons and daughter had as soon as carried out an lively Arabic hip-hop routine to their worldwide guests of their household house, as we sat egging them on from plush crimson couches over sugared sage tea. In his pictures, his drawn, pale kids hang around the home windows of a automotive, a part of the convoy transporting those self same crimson couches to a vacation spot unknown.
Dr Khamis Elessi’s household leaving Gaza City with all their possessions (Image: Supplied)
And behind them, the place Gaza City’s streets as soon as overflowed with gangs of children, city roosters strutting within the shadows of relic buildings from historical empires, seashore dwellers snacking on upside-down maklouba and queues for late-night tacky knafeh, high-rise houses crumple in seconds.
On October 16, 2023, Khamis printed a letter in The Lancet, one of many world’s most prestigious well being and medical journals, titled “Save Gaza residents from imminent disaster”.
He had ended the letter with a grave prophecy: “If the bloodbath continues on its present path, we will probably be dangerously near witnessing a large-scale genocide of civilians and sufferers. When have such unlawful and immoral acts ever been justified?”
Khamis spoke on in his voice message.
Due to this, I made a decision to go away Gaza to outlive this onslaught, to save lots of my household — or the remaining of my household. Because final week, I misplaced my solely aunt along with her kids and grandchildren, 53 people of that household, 4 generations of that household, fully gone. And now we can’t retrieve her physique or the physique of her children or their kids.
Despite the extraordinarily costly transport — are you able to think about only for the van or truck, you need to pay round US$2,000 simply to transport your issues.
And regardless of that to hire anywhere, even when it’s a storage, you need to pay US$2,000 per thirty days as effectively. So only for transportation and speedy rental, you want US$4,000, which can’t be afforded by the overwhelming majority of individuals in Gaza.
And regardless of the immense struggling alongside the way in which, to cross 5km or 10km solely from our space to the center zone, it takes eight or 10 hours.
Despite 715 days of being steadfast in Gaza and dealing with folks and attempting to save lots of as many lives as potential,
Finally, I made a decision to go away Gaza City.
Thank you a lot.
